Worries about the future of tribal peoples are in many ways a continuation of what has been going on for a very long time. Individual peoples have always been massacred, enslaved or deprived of their freedom-think of the peoples under the Aztecs, or the tribal peoples of India. Pressures on tribal peoples are not intrinsically related to modernity or capitalism.
Attempts to look after tribal peoples are also relatively old. Groups such as the Aborigines Protection Society or the Anti Slavery Association date back to the last century. But what is new today is the scale and speed of expansion into areas inhabited by aboriginal peoples. Most tribal peoples survive in areas which traditionally have been marginal to business-the Arctic, the desert, tropical forests. It is their bad luck that in many cases these are unexploited mineral-rich regions that are now coming under pressure.
Another development is the move away from paternalistic protection. The 1960s, when the pressures on the tribal peoples of Amazonia first came to public attention, was a period of liberal thinking. People were shocked, groups like Survival International were set up, and there was a feeling that tribal peoples would disappear unless we in the West did something about it-we, the very people who were creating the pressures in the first place!
Now the weight has shifted from westerners trying to look after tribal peoples to tribal peoples being given the power to look after themselves.